Gorge Road & Barossa Valley Drive Pack | The Stable

The Barossa Valley is Australia's most famous wine region — a 25-kilometre stretch of rolling hills, golden vines, and stone-built cellar doors that produces some of the finest Shiraz in the world. And the drive to get there, through the winding Gorge Road northeast of Adelaide, is a pleasure in itself.

The Gorge Road follows the Torrens River through a narrow valley carved into the Adelaide Hills. The road is tight and technical in places, with sandstone cuttings and overhanging gums, before opening into the broader landscape of the Barossa. It's a favourite with Adelaide's driving enthusiasts — a road that rewards smooth inputs and rewards a good car.

The Barossa itself is a landscape shaped by German Lutheran settlers who arrived in the 1840s, bringing their winemaking traditions, their architecture, and their baking. The result is a region of unique character — stone churches, German-style bakeries (the Apex Bakery in Tanunda is legendary), and cellar doors that range from grand estates (Penfolds, Jacob's Creek) to garage operations producing wines of extraordinary quality.

The wines are the main event. Barossa Shiraz is one of Australia's great contributions to world wine — rich, generous, and age-worthy. But the region also produces excellent Grenache, Mataro, Riesling (from the adjacent Eden Valley), and some of the oldest vines in the world — pre-phylloxera plantings dating to the 1840s that produce wines of concentration and complexity unavailable anywhere else.

This is a route that combines driving pleasure with food and wine of genuine world class — a day trip from Adelaide that feels like a journey to another country.